You can't buy one online. The websites that promise to ship you one after they've collected credit card payment from you all have one thing in common. They post no physical address on the website and no way to contact them other than through email if you don't receive the product they promise you. But oh yes, they all have a credit card payment system.

If you want to throw your money into a black hole and hope they'll respond to your email enquiries when you don't get the product, by all means brother: suit yourself.

In all due respect, Tar,get's LP reputation is exaggerated. I've heard it from many posters that Tar,get's central crime lab is so advanced that they lease it out to the FBI, but I strongly believe that's NOT true. Just think about that statement for a little bit and you'll see why: there is no way in hell Target's investigative technology matches that of the FBI, the most advanced law enforcement agency in the world. Please don't tell me that you really believe Tar,get's financial resources measure up to those of the US Government.

I do agree with you that for the occasional "small stuff" lifter Tar,get's no harder than any other retailer; reason being, they only have so much LP staff, which has to focus on the higher value lifts and the expensive merchandise.

The fact that their items are bulky and hard to conceal plus lack of self checkout might have more to do with their low shrink than LP presence.

Lucky you! In my area those stores that used to do receiptless returns for store credit up until Covid-19, don't even do that any more. If you don't have a receipt, they won't touch a return with a 10-foot pole. They've even printed the new store policies in big posters, which they happily point to when they get customer pushback.

Do you think they've like, opened a file on me now?

Oh absolutely, the file automatically gets sent to the local FBI office, which then forms a task force for a country-wide manhunt for the offender.

Kidding aside, why is it you feel bad for lifting from Tar,get? That you've been shopping there for a long time just means that you've been giving them your hard earned money (and they've been happy to take it). If you wanna keep doing that, suit yourself. Your body and your muscles won't be thanking you for the hard toil you've been putting them through, just to earn the cash you spend at Tar,get

There's a lot you can get away with if you're not caught, but that was not our topic in this thread. LP isn't doing a drive-by shooting. LP isn't getting away from anything. Bottom line is that preventing someone from leaving is kidnapping plain and simple unless you're doing a citizen's arrest (in which case you have to SAY that to the subject you're detaining -- and you can only detain if you're calling the police).

I don't know any places that'll do a return without receipt these days. So, in the vast majority of cases, unless your answer is "Yes", it doesn't much matter what you answer (in the sense that it won't change the outcome).

Umm no, how about possible kidnapping charge for LP? She blocked someone's exit without saying she was making a citizen's arrest: that's illegal detention right there! OP had every right to push her aside to secure his right of passage. LP would have to answer for that at trial so no, a police report would NOT be filed, even if they'd identified him.

It's also a lot more work, time, and expense to catch and prosecute

True! LP would have to take the time and go to court and testify as a witness on trial date. That's the only basis for a shoplifting case.

The real reason stores aren't keen on prosecuting though is that there's no big money in it for them. All they can be awarded by a court is loss cost which is pretty low and stores find it more convenient to just send the offender a civil demand letter for that amount (usually with a veiled but illegal threat of criminal prosecution). It's not like they're going after an insurance company for hundreds of thousands.

So yea, it makes more sense to prevent loss of merchandise in the first place. I don't buy some former LP's description of their job requirement: which was that they had to recover stolen goods in the amount of at least their hourly rate in order for their position to be justified. I don't think so. It doesn't quite work like that on the sales floor.

I don't know if there's a way to be good at hiding the fact that you're LP on the store floor.

It's pretty obvious they're not shoppers. They don't look like a normal customer that's searching for something specific. They wander around from department to department, with no purpose, pretending to be on the phone, and/or manhandling different, unrelated items, but with eyes elsewhere.

At one store where I worked, they didn't even make any effort to look undercover, even though they were in plain clothes. They just stood in some corner, leaning against the wall or some arch, and .... just people-watch. That had to be for deterrent purposes more than anything else.

Order it and DNA it means I have to pay for it first, and then maybe (just maybe) I see a refund who knows when. Not how I play. I take or I don't, but I don't put money forward. Not for just merchandise (it'd have to be something with much bigger reward than that).

Break into a typical house for what exactly? Breaking in is automatically a felony even if you only lift a needle, so to risk that charge the reward has to be worth it. A typical house would have nothing inside worth that risk. And in untypical, wealthy people's homes, the truly valuable stuff (cash, jewelry) will be secured beyond most people's skills (high tech vaults and in unconceivable, hard to reach places). Read "The Lock Artist". Your book won't make it very far with a "typical" house, I'm afraid.

Amazon "Did not Arrive" bla bla

Great advice but it's just like all the movies .... nothing applies to me! There's nothing I'd want to buy from Amazon.

If you have advice on how to steal gas without being manhunted on the highways or how steal my utility and internet services, talk to me. Otherwise, .... Yaaaaawwwnnn!

Almost all LP is undercover: you won't know for sure who they are until they stop you. This is the only way they can be effective. But yea, Co$tco stuff is bulky and hard to lift, plus in the one Co$tco store in my area there are no self check outs so the only way to lift is to either conceal or walk out. And they have receipt checkers at the doors (not greeters, these are store staff and they ask you to stop for receipt check).

In that case, they may have just been lucky to have a cop nearby, but for some other reason, not for you. Like I said, I can't see how there'd be enough time for the cop to get there for you if they call them after you pass last point of sale.

And if this is your first time at this store, then they clearly broke operational rules if they called the cops before you passed last register. Not suprising or unheard of but rare because even in those cases cop response times are too long to do any good. We're not talking 911 calls or armed robbery.

If they called the cops, they would've done that before you passed all points of sale. Otherwise, there's not enough time for the cops to get there before you get in your car. As per most corporate rules, they're not supposed to call the cops before you've passed all cash registers, because until then there's no proof of intent to steal.

So if they're doing that, it only means one thing: they've made you from your previous lifts at that location. This is where the not getting too greedy for your own good comes in. You can remain under their radar if you only lift a few items per trip, but walking out with a cart full of stuff will draw their attention (too much stuff gone missing at once). I've never walked out with cart packed full of stuff. Only done small lifts every trip (few items in a bag or on me, mixed with a couple of paid for items to avoid suspicion). This keeps me under the radar. Going on four years of lifting now, and still haven't so much as drawn one bit of attention

It doesn't have to be nearly as extreme a complaint as hair in the food. You can just say the food was stale and that's legitimate (what, they don't try to get rid of their old food supply by serving it to customers?)

You're paying for a good experience, not a crappy one that stays with you all day. They understand that, just like they understand that it's hard to make a profit from just one-time customers. So yea, if they want to keep you coming back, they'll replace the stale meal they gave you (likely with two free meals, to make up for the bad experience).

Running when they're not in your way is easy (and I don't necessarily mean sprint, I mean just keep walking, as most of LP are not allowed to follow you past the end of the parking lot).

The real question should be what do you do when they actually block your exit, to try to force you to go with them. I've personally witnessed LP do this to someone at Wmart. I overheard the guy say to the lifter "we're not arresting you but ...."

Umm, but what? If they're not doing a citizen's arrest, then blocking your exit is illegal detention, REGARDLESS OF THE REASON FOR DOING IT. An LP that does this is just taking the chance that you won't pursue this matter and he won't end up getting charged with this offense or a variant of it (possibly even kidnapping).

From LP's point of view, blocking the exit has the advantage that it forces you to throw the first punch if you still want to run (and hence face the charge of assault), while LP can say he never touched you.

How you act in this sort of situation is an individual decision. Me personally, I would try to shove the guy aside just enough to clear my way and get out of the store. I'd only punch him if he grabs me and tries to hold me (and I'll argue self defense in addition to illegal detention, if the matter goes to court).

You need to stop watching movies. They're entertaining but are out of touch with the real world.

Bank robbers are either caught in the act or never caught. Ask any bank robbery detective. So we're clearly not talking about the same thing.

I'm talking about someone who's got away clean. Go ahead, do your research (I'll wait), and then come and tell me how far the police get when they ask for the public's assistance in identifying an ATM robber from just a released picture of robber wearing a mask and cap.

If camera footage doesn't clearly show your full face, they just don't have enough for an arrest in the first place. So a baseball cap and face mask should do.

You sound like you're trying to commit armed bank robbery, movie-style.

Wigs fake noses? That's a lot of trouble for just retail lifting. None of it's necessary. If you're lifting from grocery stores, you won't ever be made if you're careful in how you do it (most of them have no actual LP).

If you're trying to lift something big or expensive from say, hardware or clothing stores, you should not plan on going to the same store for a long while anyway, EVEN IF you get away clean. For a $500 item they may want to review camera footage and if they make you and keep an eye out for you, they'll recognize you even with disguise (you simply look out of place and/or have the same body/walking style etc.)

Not to say that any of this will automatically land you in trouble but lifting expensive stuff too often from the same location is asking for trouble.

I don't know if you've noticed but they put out mattresses free for the taking outside most apartment buildings. I'd choose the ones that are wrapped in plastic. They come with a free dose of bed bugs.

I agree that you don't need to buy anything. You can just pretend to try on stuff in the fitting rooms and then say none of it worked out for you. But concealing in the fitting rooms only works in places without fitting room attendands, otherwise the attendants will count the items going in and give you a number tag for that. In this case, the only way to pull this off is to trade an old shirt for the one you want to lift (so they can see that you came out with the same number of items as you went in).

And, honestly, as far as concealing a shirt in your shorts goes, you don't need to go to a fitting room for that -- lots of places on the floor to do that without being noticed. The problem is finding items that don't have security magnets or deactivating the magnets.

Forget auditing brother, that's the last of your worries.

Your first problem is to how to comply with ebay's rules for what you can and can't sell. I've only looked at amazon's rules so far and they seem quite restrictive. Most of the profitable items (power tools, electric shaving razors, small appliances etc.) that you can lift for reselling are prohibited items unless u're an established business with some tax id number. My bet is that, just like amazon, ebay won't let you sell most items that are worth selling.

If you open an individual seller account (as opposed to a business account) ebay is going to want a lot of information about you, not just your bank account number. So your immediate problem is not going to be your bank or the IRS/CRA. It'll be ebay and its people. When they see that an individual is selling a dozen electric razors a month, they won't ask you for an explanation. They'll know you're using ebay as a front for looted stuff.

I've asked around and so far no one has an answer for this sort of situation. Best advice i've heard is to open an business account in order to avoid suspicion. But, again, not sure how an individual can prove they're a legitimate, say, electric razor store.

I'm speaking from my direct experience too. Worked in retail a lot of years and one thing that they definitely do NOT want you to do is confront shoplifters. So I don't know what "being on alert" means really, ... other than notifying LP that someone looks sus, which again does nothing. LP can't do anything unless they saw you lift.

These are not broad statements at all. Are you gonna apprehend and charge someone with shoplifting? Who's going to go to the trial and testify as a witness? You, the associate? Certainly not LP and not anyone who didn't see it happen. Ask any LP and they will tell you that you can't just go to them and say "this guy is lifting, go get him." LP will tell u that if they didn't see it, it didn't happen. Which is correct: if you're going to make a charge, you have to be able to say you personally witnessed it.